World Literature and Contemporary Fiction
World Literature and Contemporary Fiction
The period since World War II has seen the global emergence of world literature in the strong sense. This phenomenon can best be investigated through focus on the novel, the distinctive genre of modernity and the one where Western influence is strongest. Though distinguished realist and modernist fiction continues to be written, the central development of postwar fiction is postmodernism, understood as the recombination of the realist and modernist legacies. The postmodern novel synthesizes nineteenth-century plotted narratives with the modernist challenge to the meaningfulness of such narratives. It draws on a characteristic set of formal strategies—complex use of point of view; emphasis on the text as written document; undermining of the causal logic of the plot; and distancing of the present through recourse to the supernatural or to history. This is the fiction of the American century, but in an increasingly polycentric world.
Keywords: world literature, postmodern novel, postwar fiction, Nabokov, Pale Fire, American century
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